Challenge: Doing situated research and art production in rural areas with minimal climate neutral infrastructure, and navigating unfamiliar climate neutral infrastructure

SALT. CLAY. ROCK. had a difficult task; we were interested in doing research in unfamiliar rural areas without rail service, using e-cars to get there in order to meet our climate neutral production goals.

Between Berlin and Budapest we could easily travel by train, but many of the sites where we were working have very infrequent or non-existent train service. We had to rely on other means of transport.

In rural Hungary:
During our research period, there was very little e-car infrastructure outside of the Budapest region. The fact that Hungary's government was pushing the controversial plan to make the country an e-car battery manufacturing hub has only at the time of this writing begun to deepen investments in e-car infrastructure. For our research trip and subsequent visits to Hungary's rural areas, it was clear that the best we could do was to rent hybrid cars in combination with rail travel in order to arrive at our research sites. The only e-car loading station we encountered during our trip was, ironically, in front of the Paks nuclear power plant.

In Germany:
We were not lucky with our travel adventures in rural Germany. At the beginning of our  e-car trip through Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt and Lower Saxony, we were excited by the possibility of traveling with an electric car. None of us had ever used one, and we had the forethought to make sure that there were charging stations along the way. We looked at the map and saw that there were chargers along the way and figured that was that.

Our first problem was that we had no idea of the car's range, and had to find a charging station far sooner than we had calculated. At the Wolfsburg charging station where we ended up, we thought we'd be fine to charge the car while we ate dinner. It was a surprise stop in the city known for producing Volkswagens, and it was difficult to find a restaurant that was open. After finally enjoying a surprise Italian dinner in the town square, we went back to the charging station to find that the car was not yet fully charged. In order to keep on schedule, we decided to press on.

By now, it must be a mundane complaint among those in the know that in order to rent an e-car, you need to  know about the charging infrastructure you will be relying on throughout your trip. We had to learn on the fly that many charging stations are slow, and intended to charge a car up overnight. We found some stations, for example one behind the corporate burger joint outside of Morsleben, that could quickly fill up the car. Imagine what our meal was, and how climate-neutral this and its packaging were …

One time, our battery was almost empty and we were quite worried, we were excited to find a charging station at one of our destinations - an information center of the BGE next to the Asse Repository. Unfortunately only employees, not visitors were allowed to use it. At our next stop we arrived almost 2 hours late because we had to recharge on the way.
The combination of navigating new terrain in a new technology vehicle was overwhelming for us. Because of these problems, we were always arriving late to appointments, upsetting our hosts, or arriving late in the evening to our accommodations and missing satisfying meals. It was fun to travel with all five of us in a car, but the rushing around and lack of good meals made us a bit cranky.

A June 2022 report said that because of a lack of charging stations and infrastructure investment needed to power its desired 10.5 million e-vehicles, Germany will likely miss its 2030 e-car target needed to alter the country's climate trajectory. We found an adequate but spotty infrastructure that made for a stressful trip.

In the end, we learned by doing, and we would not make the same planning mistakes again. At this point, e-car infrastructure is organized around regular commuters. We hope that as the technology improves, travelers will not need to make as many frequent stops, and to be able to enjoy timely meals. As organized now, travelling in a relaxed manner by e-car  takes too much time, time that precariously financed cultural workers often do not have.